What Comes After Antibiotics? 5 Alternatives to Stop Superbugs

"Superbug" bacterial infections that are resistant to common antibiotics are increasing at an alarming rate. But traditional antibiotics aren't the only way to battle dangerous germs. Biomedical scientists are investigating new additions to their arsenal.

What Comes After Antibiotics? 5 Alternatives to Stop Superbugs

What Comes After Antibiotics? 5 Alternatives to Stop Superbugs

In the realm of human health, few developments are scarier than the growing uselessness of antibiotics. These miracle drugs have kept killer diseases in check for decades, saving millions of lives. Fortunately, antibiotics still work—most of the time. And though we are winning battles against germs, scientists fear that we are starting to lose the war.

According to a 2013 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two million people in the United States now come down with antibiotic-resistant superbug infections every year. At least 23,000 victims die annually. And harmful bacteria and fungi are evolving resistance to deployed antibiotics at a quicker pace than we can come up with new drugs. From 1980 to 2000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved more than 50 new antibiotics. Since then, the number approved is less than 10—and, since 2010, zero.

"We have to do something, because the old antibiotic approach is failing," says Ry Young, director of the Center for Phage Technology at Texas A&M University. "The problem is becoming worse, and becoming worse faster."

In the arms race with pathogens, here are some of our most promising new weapons.

Phages

Phages

Young and his colleagues at Texas A&M aim to unleash bacteria's age-old nemeses called bacteriophages, or phages for short. Phages are simply viruses that infect and kill bacteria. They are ubiquitous in nature and in our bodies—astonishingly, Young notes, more than 90 percent of the DNA found in us belongs to phages. All those phages are parasitizing the trillions of resident bacteria within us; those bacterial cells outnumber our "own" by about 10 to one.

Phages do not cause human illness, but for any kind of bacterium, there are often dozens of phages that harry it. Figuring out which kinds work best and could be produced economically by drug companies will take some time, but the benefits of "phage therapy" sure look enticing.

Many phages target only a few strains or even a single species of bacteria. That's a good thing: Phages are more precise than some of today's antibiotics that kill indiscriminately, causing collateral damage in our guts by wasting good-guy bacteria. "With phages, you can target your targets rather than give yourself a broad-spectrum antibiotic," Young says. As a bonus, phages that are treating an infection crank out more phages as they replicate in the stricken bacteria. "I joke that it's the only medicine that grows," he says.

The clinical use of phages started in the 1920s and '30s, meaning it actually predated the development of antibiotics. But today, just a few countries, such as Russia and Georgia, still administer the beneficial viruses to humans, through various means including oral concoctions and via injections. What happened to phage therapy? As Young explained, phages were discovered before the advent of modern biomolecular science, and the incredible success of conventional antibiotics in the 1940s relegated phage pharmaceutical investigation to the back burner. It's hard to say when we'll see phage therapy take hold in the U.S. because of intellectual-property and FDA regulatory hurdles, but Young remains hopeful.